Services02 · FW
Embedded firmware development for connected products
The software inside the device that makes it sense, decide, and respond — written at the same bench that designs the boards.
Some firmware starts on a blank flash: a new board, a new product, everything to write. Some arrives as a rescue: a device in the field, the original developer gone, a bug that only shows up on Tuesdays. This seat hires either way — full firmware from bare metal, or the one missing piece: an audit, a driver, an update pipeline.
Firmware, engineered like hardware
Measured, budgeted, and proven on instruments — not shipped the day it stops crashing.
Bare-metal & RTOS
Deterministic control loops, interrupt-driven design, and task architectures that stay debuggable at 2 a.m. — bare metal when the product is simple, an RTOS when it isn't.
Embedded interfaces
Responsive interfaces on embedded displays: instant wake, smooth interaction, and screens a housekeeper or a machine operator understands without a manual.
Wireless & protocols
BLE links to phone apps, custom low-power radio protocols, and pairing flows that work the first time — in the field, not just at the demo.
Power management
Deep-sleep architectures with the current budget read off a bench meter, not a datasheet footnote. Battery life is a measured number here.
Over-the-air updates
Signed images, safe rollback, staged fleet rollout — the difference between a product you shipped once and a product you can keep improving.
Sensors & signal processing
Drivers, calibration, filtering, and on-device decisions, so the device sends answers upstream instead of noise.
Audits & rescue
Inherited codebases stabilized, instrumented, and put under test. We document what exists before changing what doesn't work.
Production test & tooling
Manufacturing test firmware, flashing and provisioning tools — so the line can build and verify units without an engineer standing next to it.
How firmware comes together here
- 01
Architecture
Hardware review — or co-design, when we're building the board too — plus task and memory budgets and an update strategy, decided before the first driver.
- 02
Bring-up & drivers
Board support, peripherals, and a test harness, proven subsystem by subsystem on instruments.
- 03
Product logic & UI
The behavior your customer actually experiences: sensing, decisions, display, connectivity.
- 04
Hardening
Watchdogs, brownout and fault recovery, verified power budgets, and soak tests that run for weeks, not minutes.
- 05
OTA & field support
The update pipeline stood up, the first fleet rollout done together, and the codebase handed over documented and under CI.
Proof from the bench
LiquiTrak device firmware
Firmware for a handheld measurement device: an embedded display interface that wakes instantly, a precision sensing chain, wireless sync to the cloud platform, and software that updates in the field — running across a pilot fleet in real hotels.
- Embedded UI
- Low power
- OTA updates
Where you might be starting
New board, blank flash
The hardware exists or is being designed; the product needs its firmware written, from architecture to over-the-air updates.
Prototype firmware, production stakes
The dev-kit demo works. Now it needs power budgets, fault recovery, updates, and tests before it meets customers.
The missing seat
Your team covers hardware and cloud; the firmware seat is empty. We fill it — and hand back documented, tested code.
Firmware rescue
Devices in the field, source in doubt, original author unreachable. We audit, stabilize, and take ownership.
Firmware decisions echo up the stack
The packet format chosen in firmware becomes the app's sync model and the cloud's schema. When one bench owns all three, those decisions get made once, correctly — instead of negotiated between vendors after the fact.
Fair questions
Can you write firmware for hardware you didn't design?
Yes — it's half the work here. We read schematics fluently because we draw them, and when we find a hardware issue along the way we flag it instead of silently coding around it.
What does firmware development cost?
A bounded engagement — an audit, a driver, an OTA pipeline — is quoted as a fixed piece of work. Full product firmware runs in phases tied to the process above, each priced before it starts. One conversation gets you a concrete number.
Can you add over-the-air updates to an existing product?
Usually, yes — it depends on memory headroom and the bootloader situation, which is exactly what a short audit establishes. It's one of the most common single-seat engagements we take.
What do we get at handoff?
Source under version control with CI, build documentation, a test harness, and a written map of the architecture. The goal is that the next engineer — yours or ours — is productive in a day.
Who owns the code?
You do — 100% of the IP we develop for you. We're glad to sign an NDA before you share anything.
Our device talks to a phone app and a cloud — can you build those too?
Yes. The same studio builds companion apps and cloud dashboards, which is exactly why the firmware's protocols and update strategy never end up fighting the app roadmap.
Have a device in mind?
Tell us what the device needs to do and where the firmware stands — blank flash, half-working prototype, or a codebase nobody wants to touch. We reply within one business day with an honest read, and we'll sign an NDA first if you like.
Based in New Jersey — on-site across the NJ–NYC–Philadelphia corridor, remote everywhere else.
Prefer email? contact@techtilelabs.com